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Monday, April 21, 2008

Learning Chinese & China's Challenges

With the recent negative publicity on China, should you still Learn Chinese?

China does have challenges and many of the activities of the government are not the most popular. Darfur, selling weapons to Zimbabwe, corruption, largest green house producer, environmental issues, intellectual rights, product safety, Taiwan, Tibet, Burma, Falun Gong, religious control are all issues that are unpopular with many people.

So with all these negatives, Why Learn Chinese? Learning Chinese is not about liking the Chinese governments actions, I view it as doing what is best for your kids.

Updated List of Why Learn Chinese

I believe a lot of what is happening in China is growing pains and China emerges from a period of stagnation (100+ years). China's the second largest economy in the world and still has a high rate of growth.

China's growth in the world is not going to change. China has become the factory of the world.

China's 5000 years of culture and a great way to learn and understand more, is by Learning Chinese.

Chinese imports from the US (trade goes both ways. China is a huge market).

The world is become more interconnected, and China is part of this. This change is both good and challenging for China. It's because of this growing interconnection that China is having many of these challenges. An event that happens halfway across the word in South Africa (dock workers refusing to unload Chinese weapons for Zimbabwe) gets global attention. Images of Darfur are easily accessible from one of the more remote areas of the world.

Learning Chinese does give another viewpoint. From the grammar and how sentences are formed, to the differences between a character based language and a romanized. Chinese poetry/poems are better in their original language Chinese, than English.

Many jobs already are connected to China, and as China's economy grows many more will be. Knowing Chinese gives your kids an advantage in taking advantage of the opportunities with this huge market for both imported and exported goods.

Learning of Chinese is going through Huge Growth in the US. Can you afford not to have your kids learn Chinese?